Editor's Column

9 January 2001

The 613 build: problems and opportunities

On 13 December 2000, Sun’s engineers released the 613 installation set (the
latest build) to the OpenOffice.org community. As with all of previous builds,
Sun’s engineer’s had thoroughly tested the software on the standard assortment
of boxes and under the usual circumstances. The release performed as designed,
and there was no reason to suspect that any problem would be worse than the
usual for a pre-alpha release.

For these reasons, then, the bugs that were immediately discovered by community
members who attempted to install and run the software were all the more surprising.
The bugs rendered the software by and large inoperable and unusable. These community
members were not, it should be stressed, using strange boxes; their setups were
perfectly ordinary. What is more, all previous builds installed as expected
and were stable.

The traffic in the "discuss" mailing list was far greater than average,
and members were busy offering warnings and advice. But it seemed that many
community members could not successfully install the build, let alone run the
software.

Once the extent of the problem became clear, pulling the installation set became
a plausible response. From this perspective, the 613 build reflected an inexplicable
and slightly embarrassing slip-up in quality assurance that should not be inflicted
on the community at large. Indeed, barely twenty-four hours after the release,
Sander Vesik initiated a new
thread in the "discuss" list that asked the community members
whether the installation sets should be pulled. At the heart of the query lay
the concern that community members were both wasting their time with 50-plus
megabyte downloads and that the OpenOffice.org project was revealing itself
to be an unprofessional effort.

The response to Sander’s poll was immediate and at first seemed to lean toward
the idea of pulling the installation set, with one correspondent arguing that
removing it would "save face." But then OpenOffice.org Community Manager
Adam "Goolie" Gould persuasively arguedthat
saving face was not the point of an open-source project:

"If this were a proprietary beta release," Goolie pointed out, "then
yes, we all wouldn't want to 'look bad' in front of our customers, and would
be worried about damaging our reputation in the market." But the build
was not a proprietary beta release, and OpenOffice.org is not a proprietary
project. In fact, OpenOffice.org is an important leader in the open-source movement
and, rather than illustrating a failure of QA, the problems surrounding the
release and the community response indicate the strength of the open
source model for finding and addressing development problems.

That’s because, "As far as Sun could tell, they released a perfectly fine
build; it worked on all their test cases. We only discovered problems when
you, the larger OpenOffice.org community, discovered some issues on your unique
"test cases". This is exactly when we need your help." The great
advantage, in short, of an open-source community lies precisely in its ability
to spot (and even fix) bugs of this sort. Pulling the build would thus defeat
the purpose of OpenOffice.org, which does not pretend to release bug-free builds
and relies on the dialectic relation with the community members to create better
software.

The installation set was not pulled. But, prospective downloaders were warned
that the build was problematic. Has the project suffered as a result of the
problematic build? There’s no easy way to tell. But, judging from the level
of developer engagement, measured by mailing-list posts and downloads, the answer
is, no. In fact, for the week of 17 December to 23 December, there were a very
impressive 4,310 downloads. The numbers suggest, in short, a community hardly
scared by the problems of the build and instead even more engaged, even more
interested in the future of OpenOffice.org.

My next column addresses a point recently raised in the discuss mailing list
and that can be summarized as, Whither OpenOffice.org? or, Where do we go from
here? And, as always, if you have any questions, suggestions, or comments, please,
don't hesitate to e-mail me at the address below.

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